So we currently have two happy chappy global indexes. I’m now however going to drop one of the table partitions without updating the global indexes and monitor both the db block gets and amount of redo that gets generated:

Both global indexes are now unusable as a result as they haven’t been maintained on the fly and so have orphaned index entries pointing to the now non-existent table partition. So it was fast but left the global indexes in an unusable state which have to now be rebuilt.

The other option would be to drop the table partition but to also update the global indexes at the same time as follows:

We notice this time, the operation has taken considerably longer and has generated many more db block gets (56,143 up from 56) and much more redo (44,033,220 bytes up from 10,860). So updating the global indexes on the fly comes at a cost, but at least they remain usable at the end of the operation:

The CBO is trying to use the index via the Index Full Min/Max Scan to quickly find this minimum ID. However, it keeps hitting leaf blocks with nothing but empty/deleted entries due to dropping the table partition, until it gets through roughly 1/3 of all the index leaf blocks before finally finding the first (and so minimum) non-deleted index value. As such, at 2,787 consistent gets, it’s a relatively expensive operation.

If however, we were to insert a whole bunch of new rows into the table (note these are rows with an ID value greater than existing rows) and then re-run the same query:

We notice that at just 161 consistent gets (reduced from 2,787), the Index Full Min/MAX Scan is much more efficient as most of the previously empty leaf blocks on the “left hand side of the index” have now been recycled due to inserting the new data into the “right hand side of the index”. As such, we now find the minimum ID value via the index much more efficiently.

So that was how things kinda worked in 11g and beforehand. However, with Oracle 12c, things have now changed as we’ll see in the next post …

In Partial Indexes Part I, we looked at how it was possible with the 12c database to create a Partial Index based on data from only selected table partitions. The resultant Partial Index can be either a Global or Local Index.

In Part I, we only really looked at Global Indexes, so let’s look at a Local Index example. Using the same Partitioned Table example as before:

We can see that for those table partitions with INDEXING OFF, the associated Local Indexes have simply been made UNUSABLE. Since Unusable Indexes consume no storage, there is effectively no corresponding index segment for these index partitions.

For the one and only PK3 table partition with INDEXING ON, its associated Local Index has been created as normal. So the end result is very similar to the previous Global Index example, only those rows from the table partitions with the INDEXING ON property are effectively being indexed.

There is one scenario in which the creation of a Partial Index is not permitted, that is in the creation of a Unique Index or a Non-Unique Index to police a Primary Key or Unique Key constraint. Some examples:

It clearly doesn’t make sense to create a Partial Unique Index or on a Non-Unique Index policing a PK or Unique Key constraint as it would be impossible to use such an index to guarantee the required unique property. With missing index entries associated with non-indexed partitions, how can Oracle determine whether a value from new row already exists or not ? It can’t and hence Oracle doesn’t permit the creation of such a Partial Index.

In my opinion, one of the unsung “Heroes” of the new 12c Oracle database are improvements associated with Partitioning. There are lots of really nice capabilities introduced in the 12c database that significantly improves the manageability of partitioned environments.

One of those new capabilities is the ability to now create both local and (importantly) global indexes on only a subset of partitions within a partitioned table. This provides us with the flexibility to say only create partitions with data that would make sense to index, to not index current partitions where perhaps data insert performance is paramount, etc. Additionally and just as importantly, the CBO is aware of the indexing characteristics of individual partitions and can access partitions in differing manners accordingly.

To illustrate, a simple little demo as usual :) Firstly, I’ll create a partitioned table with the new INDEXING clause:

The INDEXING clause determines whether or not the partition is to be indexed. It can be set at the table level and so set the default behaviour for the table or at the individual partition/subpartition level.

In the above example, I’ve set INDEXING OFF at the table level and so indexing by default is not be enabled for the table partitions. Therefore the PF1 partition is not indexed by default. The PF2 partition is explicitly set to also not be indexed but the PF3 index is explicitly set (INDEXING ON) to enable indexing and so override the table level default.

By default, an index will include all partitions in a table, regardless of the INDEXING table clause setting. So this index covers all 3M rows in the table and currently has 9203 leaf blocks. The new INDEXING column in DBA_INDEXES shows us that this index is a FULL (non-Partial) index.

We can of course get the data of interest (STATUS = ‘OPEN’) via this index now:

Currently however, the index includes data from all table partitions, even though we’re only really interested in using the index to retrieve the less common ‘OPEN’ status that resides in only the last table partition. With 12c, there is now the capability to only index those partitions that are of interest to us, which with proper design can also be implemented such that only those column values of interest are included within an index.

The new INDEXING PARTIAL clause means only those table partitions with INDEXING ON are to be included within the index.

Notice how the index, which is a Global, Non-Partitioned Index, now only has 1M entries (not all 3M as previously) and with 3068 leaf blocks is only 1/3 of what it was previously. The INDEXING column now denotes this as a “Partial” index.

If we run the query again that only explicitly references the last “active” table partition:

We see that the index is used as it was previously. By stating with the ID > 2000001 predicate we’re only interested in data that can only reside in the last table partition, the partition with INDEXING ON, the CBO knows the index can be used to retrieve all the rows of interest. If we know the application will only extract data in this manner, all is well with our smaller, Partial index.

However, if it’s possible within the application to perhaps search for STATUS values from other partitions, that have INDEXING OFF:

We notice the index is still used to efficiently find those rows of interest from the last partition, but a Full Table (Partition) Scan is performed to search for data from the other two partitions, for which with INDEXING OFF means the index does not contain entries that reference these partitions. As a result, this query is now much more expensive than it was previously as the index can not be used to exclusively find the rows of interest. The CBO within the one execution plan uses the index where it can and a full scan of the other partitions where it can’t use the index.

If however we were a little cleverer in how we designed our table and also created table subpartitions based on the STATUS column so that rows of interest resided in their own subpartitions and only set INDEXING ON for these subpartitions:

Notice how only the subpartitions with a STATUS of ‘OPEN’ are now to be indexed. If we populate the table with the exact same data as before, we find the table and partial index have the follow characteristics:

We can see that only the subpartitions with data of interest are now indexed. The resultant Partial global non-partitioned index is now tiny, with just the 100 index entries of interest residing in a single leaf block.

Just as importantly, a query searching for this data across the whole table is now extremely efficient and can be fully serviced by this tiny Partial index:

The query can now be fully serviced by the Partial index as all subpartitions that could contain data of interest are indexed and because the data of interest is all neatly clustered within the table subpartitions, can be retrieved with far fewer consistent gets than previously.

If we ever wanted to access those STATUS values of ‘CLOSED’, the CBO can only do so via a Full Table Scan as such values are not indexed. However, as these values represent the vast majority of rows in the table, the Full Table Scan would be the most appropriate and efficient manner to access these rows any-ways.

The new Partial Index capabilities introduced in Oracle 12c enables us to easily use global (and local) indexes to just index data of interest without having to change the application. Such a capability has many potential uses.

From an indexing perspective, one of the bigger ticket items introduced with Oracle Database 12c is the new capability to create multiple indexes on the same column list. It’s even a feature listed in the New Features Guide :) This can be particularly useful when you want to change the index definition in some way but you want to reduce the time in which the corresponding columns might not indexed.

Previous to 12c, you could not create an index if the same column list is already indexed and would generate an ORA-01408: such column list already indexed error. So, if you wanted to change an index from being say a B-Tree index to a Bitmap index, or from being Unique to Non-Unique or from being Non-Partitioned to Partitioned in same manner, etc. then you had to first drop the index and re-create it again as required. This means for the period in which the index is being re-created (which could be a considerable period for a larger index), the column list is not covered by an index, which might prove to be problematic.

Here, we create a partitioned table and create a Non-Unique, Non-Partitioned index on the ID column:

This means the constraint is not automatically enforced (unless we disable it with validate, thus locking the table) and the ID column is not available via an index during the entire duration of creating the new index.

The 12c database has given us more flexibility in this regard.

Providing we create the index as INVISIBLE (meaning there is only ever the one Visible index on the column list), we can now create multiple indexes on the same column list, providing the new index has a different characteristic to existing indexes. So with a 12c database:

We now have two indexes on the same column list (the ID column). An attempt however to create or alter an index such that two visible indexes have the same column list will fail:

SQL> alter index ziggy_id_i2 visible;
alter index ziggy_id_i2 visible
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-14147: There is an existing VISIBLE index defined on the same set of
columns.

This means we can now (say) replace the index policing the PK constraint quicker (or convert a B-Tree to a Bitmap index or convert a Non-Partitioned index to a Partitioned index, etc.) as we don’t now have to wait for the new index to be created first:

We can create as many indexes as we like on the ID, providing only one index is ever visible at a time and providing all the indexes have some form of differing characteristic. For example, all these indexes could potentially all co-exist: